Bear in mind that although you will earn more per download, indies will be undercutting you, and are often favoured in best match nowadays. However if you feel you have little to lose, why not suck it and see. AFAIK, if you already have files in the PP, they will stay there unless you opt them out; it's interesting to speculate what their plans are for TS now that they have subs.

If you're thinking about having a long term future selling stock (photos? answer might vary a bit depending on your medium or media) I honestly think you'd do better to stay independent.

Long time iStock exclusives are (for the most part) experiencing huge drops in downloads, and in many cases income as well. There is only so long you can put up prices to counter falling downloads and decreasing royalty percentages (you only get 20% on Getty). Not only is iStock not doing well at the moment but Getty is struggling a bit too (you can read up about the two private equity funds who've burdened them with debt as they took massive amounts of money out of the business to pay themselves "dividends")

If you keep selling through Shutterstock and other sites that raise your royalty rate the more you sell, I think you'll do better than gambling that iStock can pull out of its current nosedive.

I'm an indie-exclusive-indie so I did see the really, really good side of iStock exclusivity, but that was then...

I'll give you the opposing point of view from the July sales thread on iStock (I just went to have a look and it is something you should read as you consider exclusivity). Most of the entries are very gloomy, but there is this very upbeat comment from one exclusive:

"Small port, but absolutely thrilled with being a new exclusive. In July 2013, revenues were $1.54 for 4 non-exclusive iStock only sales. In July 2014, revenues were $26.48 for 5 exclusive iStock only sales. It's the same trend for year-to-date. Very inspiring, at least so far. Honestly, I can't believe anyone would question the benefits of exclusivity."

This is a contributor with 385 images and between 300 and 400 sales. If 5 sales a month seems good to you (it isn't) then I guess exclusivity might be for you too

"Small port, but absolutely thrilled with being a new exclusive. In July 2013, revenues were $1.54 for 4 non-exclusive iStock only sales. In July 2014, revenues were $26.48 for 5 exclusive iStock only sales. It's the same trend for year-to-date. Very inspiring, at least so far. Honestly, I can't believe anyone would question the benefits of exclusivity."

This is a contributor with 385 images and between 300 and 400 sales. If 5 sales a month seems good to you (it isn't) then I guess exclusivity might be for you too

Averaged - that would work out at appx 82c per image per year. A person would need north of 14,000 images to make $1000 per month at the rate.

And, because of the way the numbers work, getting to 14,000 images they would find that they now needed many many more than that. Because the more content in the collection the less each image will pay on average.

The only way of escaping this cycle is for a collection to restrict access. Or for a contributor to start producing much more saleable work. But the same calculations also apply to saleable work ultimately - the more of it there is, the less it pays.

The more of a thing there is, the less it pays. A small collection with fewer customers has the potential to be more profitable per contributor than a big collection with many more customers (and contributors).

A contributor's downloads should surely considerably exceed their uploads after a few years IMO. Else the model is not working.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 01, 2014, 22:45

This is a contributor with 385 images and between 300 and 400 sales. If 5 sales a month seems good to you (it isn't) then I guess exclusivity might be for you too

The OP is in the same-ish boat with 1000 images and around 25 sales a month...
http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=2411778

Honestly, just read the July thread and notice the only happy people are the ones who are going from 0 dls a day to 1.

Seems I'm doing better than most of those people, although I think their earnings would be better

FWIW, I started at iS in late Dec 2006, and my July dls were the worst, bar none, since Feb 2007

I started uploading there in Jan 2006. This was my worst July since 2007.

2009,2010 and 2011 my July averages were $1 per image per month iS only - just the blue bit - i.e. not including GI or extended licences.

Quote from: ShadySue on August 02, 2014, 06:05

FWIW, I started at iS in late Dec 2006, and my July dls were the worst, bar none, since Feb 2007

I started uploading there in Jan 2006. This was my worst July since 2007.

2009,2010 and 2011 my July averages were $1 per image per month iS only - just the blue bit - i.e. not including GI or extended licences.

I really started uploading there towards the end of 2005. So about the same time as bunhill.
And guess what? This July is my worst for $$ since 2007. At that time I had something like a third the images online I have now, and of course the amounts per sale were much smaller.

Seems to me that the only exclusives doing well there are bronze and possibly silver. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions of the possible reasons for that, and where things might be going there.
 

That thread is really depressing to read. So having gone indie I am earning more then people who are fully istock exclusive? And I still have less than 1000 images on the micros....

The exclusive number on the poll seems to be in free fall as well. They should at least let them nominate files for getty, if that is where all the attention and marketing money is going.

Getty nominations are possibly the answer. If it was done in the right way it would be a powerful incentive to stay exclusive.
TBH as it is at present I can't see that they care at all about exclusives. They seem to have gone too far down the road of wanting people to be exclusive, but not accepting that there is some cost to them in having content which isn't elsewhere. They have also devalued the exclusive concept with other  "exclusive" material.
There seems to be increasingly less reason to be exclusive there every month.

True enough about some having more ULs than DLs. The new standards aren't helping anyone there methinks.
Although obviously the model will, and has changed over time, the sudden changes (read drops) seen tend to point to intervention rather than evolution to me.

My current DL rate is averaging just over a DL a day, has anyone experienced the DL rate climb?
Has going exclusive increased your royalties to offset losing PP sales?

I went the other way (from exclusive to non-exclusive) last year and my DL rate climbed after that. No surprise, non-exclusive files are cheaper (and got even cheaper since). So I would expect the number of downloads rather to drop than climb when you go exclusive.

The higher image prices plus higher royalties compensate for that and the PP, of course. If you end up making more or less money at the end, probably depends heavily on the kind of images you have and how they compete against the cheap non-exclusive stuff. There are some exclusives who are making good money because they have unique images that customers are willing to pay a higher price for. If your main subject is apples on white background, the customer will have to choose between buying your apple for $30 or a non-exclusive apple for $5...

And as it sounds from other beginners, the PP seems to make an ever bigger part of their total income from iStock these days. I don't know how many PP downloads you get but if you make $20 from iStock and $50 from the PP each month, it's gonna be tough to make up for that.

Though, I believe there still is some value in going exclusive - mainly if you have limited time and want to focus on one agency. Financially it seems unlikely to pay off anymore unless you shoot high-end stuff (and even then...?).

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on August 03, 2014, 07:12

There are some exclusives who are making good money because they have unique images that customers are willing to pay a higher price for. If your main subject is apples on white background, the customer will have to choose between buying your apple for $30 or a non-exclusive apple for $5...

Though, I believe there still is some value in going exclusive - mainly if you have limited time and want to focus on one agency. Financially it seems unlikely to pay off anymore unless you shoot high-end stuff (and even then...?).

very clear explanation and helpful insight, cheers MichaelJay.
highlighting your points to note.

Except that if you have limited time, it's a hell of a lot easier and quicker to submit to multiple agencies using ftp and iptc encoded images than to submit to is alone - even with deepmeta....

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 01, 2014, 22:45

This is a contributor with 385 images and between 300 and 400 sales. If 5 sales a month seems good to you (it isn't) then I guess exclusivity might be for you too

The OP is in the same-ish boat with 1000 images and around 25 sales a month...
http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=2411778

Honestly, just read the July thread and notice the only happy people are the ones who are going from 0 dls a day to 1.

Yes! I noticed the same.  And it's so ridiculous when these people report their growing percentages, when the truth is they just sold one or two more images than the previous month...

I have been contributing to iStock for 12 months now and reached over 250 downloads (95% acceptance rate) and considering going exclusive, but have a few questions:

Acceptance rate at iStock means nothing nowadays.  They take whatever crappy image you upload, except when there is a copyright issue.  So, no reason to be proud about a high acceptance rate (I don't mean to be rude, but that's the ugly truth!).